Sunday, 9 December 2012

How many Americans know someone who makes more than $250k a year? And I'm talking about watching Huckabee on Fox, some Mets baseball player on TV, or going down to New Orleans to watch a live WWE wrestling match. How many Americans actually know some guy who makes over $250k a year?

So in the midst of the biggest event since 9-11, with the country on the fiscal cliff....why does the President go to Hawaii for a vacation? This would be like a couple about to engage in a bankruptcy proceeding but going off the week prior to gamble in Las Vegas.

If you had a hurricane coming down the way toward your home....are you actually counting on FEMA to come and help you? Really....just raise your hand if you think that FEMA is going to save you in some fashion.

With all the talk on Syria....can you even identify the country on a map?

If you work around heavy machinery in Colorado....with the new marijuana laws going into effect....are you just a bit worried about your co-workers coming into work doped up?

If you had a kid in the Washington state school system, and the new open sales of marijuana going into effect....would you be kinda worried about teachers coming into school stoned?

In twenty years....will Fox's GLEE be remembered by anyone?

Why would twenty-odd CIA guys all be sitting in a compound in Benghazi....on 9-11?

Do you really care what a bunch of West Virginia teenagers do on camera....for a new MTV series? Would it be any different than a bunch of punk kids from Texas?

When was the last time that you actually bought a music CD?

If the airport TSA dimwits that you all upset as you enter the airport.....were all women....would it change your perception of TSA?

If this teen singer....the Justine Bieber kid....actually sat down next to you at Dairy Queen....would you even recognize him?

Could you actually tell the difference between the $1 a cup of coffee at McDonalds and the $3.25 cup of coffee at Starbucks?

If you had the choice of being dropped off in a rattlesnake infested canyon in Arizona or the middle of Detroit....which would you pick?

If you ran a college and figured out that twenty-five percent of all kids who enter as freshmen will never get beyond the first year.....why wouldn't you try harder to stop them at the front door? If you knew that forty percent of the freshmen will never graduate from your college or any college....would it start to bother you about accepting them?

To be honest, when in the last five years have you had a Twinkie? Or a Ho-Ho?

If your state police announced that they'd just spent $2.5 million on a overhead drone....would you question the wisdom of such a purchase, and would you ask about the maintenance contract attached to this (likely $1.5 a year)?

Would it bother you if you learned that twenty percent of all Republicans....were really Democrats, and that the same number of Democrats....were really Republicans?

Have you kinda noticed your neighbors buying in bulk and putting two or three extra refrigerators or freezers into their garage? Have you ever asked them about the continual review of expiration dates? Yeah, they probably do throw at least a quarter of the bulk purchase food away eventually.

How many folks could actually sit through an entire opera....without falling asleep?

If your new car had an engine seizure, and the Ford mechanic eventually came to you and said it was the 15-percent ethanol mix you used....thus invalidating the warranty action....who would you be most upset with?

When auto blackboxes get finally implemented and mandated in the fall of 2014....how many people will quickly ask how to disconnect it? Thirty percent? Fifty percent? How many computer geeks will be hired to reprogram or disconnect these? Fifty thousand?

If there is no real difference between Microsoft Office 1997 and Office 2010....why would you buy the 2010 version?

If you could buy a $49 round-trip ticket from Nashville to Chicago....for standing only during the flight and leaning against some fixture for sixty minutes....would you buy the ticket?

Letters From Ripley

Inspired by Letters from Seneca (124-essay effort) that brought Stoicism out of the shadows.

Stoicism is the concept of accepting pains, woes, sorrows, troubles, luck, gains, losses, and life as being "part of nature". Whatever happened yesterday...simply happened....I can learn from it, gain from it, and then just accept it. No matter what the score was....there is tomorrow and I simply need to put my best foot forward.

Me?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads onto fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows, and in miseries. So I intend to ride out this flood upon my
virtual porch in Ripley and see where this "flood of life" takes
me...whilst sipping ice cold tea with a chunk of lemon...pondering the
comings and goings of life.